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Eternity in Death
Plot Summary From Publisher's Weekly: Robb (aka Nora Roberts) is indeed the headliner, but this all-new four-novella anthology definitely doesn't suffer from standout single syndrome—this one's all killer, no filler. In Robb's opener, a courageous female cop with a troubled past clashes with a bloodthirsty, unnaturally powerful mystery man who promises his enthralled victims immortality: charismatic con artist, or much worse? Blayney follows with the story of an enigmatic old coin that transports an American tourist and an oddly aristocratic bartender into a Regency-era adventure. In Langan's, another unsuspecting American time-traveler stumbles into romance with a 15th-century Scottish warlord who believes she's his kidnapped wife. And in McComas's, a bored housewife takes a magic carpet ride to an alternate universe do-over of her marriage. Though they don't always keep a straight face, occasionally tipping from fantasy into farce—for instance, a canny medieval Scottish ruler blithely accepting a 21st-century designer pant suit as regulation female barbarian dress—such lapses are minor; the biggest fault readers will find is that these intriguing characters are taken away so quickly (especially in Blayney's frustratingly rushed resolution). (Nov.) ''-- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. '' Map Please reference the Eternity in Death Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here. Timeline Story Start Date: April 18, 2060Dead of Night, p. 5. (Tiara Kent muses that her new birthday would be April 18, 2060.) Day 1 (April 18, 2060) *Prologue **Tiara Kent dressed carefully for her date. She was excited about the ritual she would be participating in with her lover, later that night. She knew that, after the ritual, she would die and lose her soul. But when she would awaken later, she would be immortal. **Following her lover’s instructions, she disengaged the security on her house’s private elevator and entrance, and drugged her dog Biddy. She drank the bottle of potion he had given her, and settled into her bed to wait for him. Day 2 (April 19, 2060) *Chapter 1 **Eve Dallas examined Tiara Kent’s body, as it lay sprawled on her bed. She noticed two puncture holes on the side of her neck that, according to Peabody looked like a classic vampire bite. **Eve instructed Peabody to speak to the building security while she spoke to the maid, Estella Cruz. ***The head of building security told Peabody that Tiara had disengaged her security every night for the last week. *** Cruz confirmed that Tiara had been in love for a fortnight, but claimed to never have seen her employer’s new lover. She had found Tiara dead when she had come to work earlier that morning and notified the security. On Eve’s request, she examined Tiara’s jewelry to discover that some pieces were missing. *Chapter 2 **Eve notified Tiara’s parents via ‘link, then headed to Daffodil Wheats’ house to question her. Daffodil said that Tiara had met her latest lover at a club called Bloodbath, and had nicknamed him the Dark Prince because she thought he was a vampire. Since she had been quarreling with Tiara, she hadn’t met him. **At the morgue, Morris told Eve that Tiara had been exsanguinated through the two punctures in her carotid. Since no blood had been found at the crime scene, they assumed that the killer had taken it with him. There were no other signs of violence, struggle, or restraints on the body; Morris thought that she had been thoroughly drugged. *Chapter 3 **While Peabody tried to track down the club and its owners, Eve dealt with the media, updated the murder board in her office, requested a meeting with Dr. Mira, and arranged to meet Roarke at Cop Central in the evening so that he could accompany her to Bloodbath. **Tiara’s mother, Iris Francine, and her husband, Georgio Francine, came to Central to talk to Eve. Iris said her relationship with her daughter had been troubled, but mentioned that Tiara had been obsessed with defeating age and looking young. **Dr. Mira found Eve in the lounge just as she finished interviewing the Francines. Mira suggested the possibility that the murderer had Reinfield's Syndrome and intimated that, given the success of his first murder, he would try to kill again. *Chapter 4 **Eve received confirmation that an impressive list of drugs - including date-rape drugs, sexual enhancers and tranquilizers - were found in Tiara’s body. She asked Peabody to run the cocktail by Illegals. Another report announced that the murderer’s DNA had been found in the saliva, semen and blood left behind on Tiara. **Roarke arrived, in time for the trip to Bloodbath, and Eve updated him on the case. McNab swung by her office and offered to accompany them to the club as well. **In the car, they discussed the authenticity of the vampire legend. Then, in pairs, they navigated their way through New York’s underground tunnels to the club, where Roarke bribed the bouncers to procure entry. **Inside, Eve approached a bartender (Allesseria Carter) and demanded that she get hold of the person in charge. As they waited, Eve showed her Tiara’s picture. Allesseria claimed ignorance, but Eve saw that she was frightened and lying. **Eve watched Dorian Vadim, Bloodbath’s owner, theatrically made his way toward them. *Chapter 5 **Vadim recognized Tiara from when she had visited the club earlier, but said that they hadn’t had sex. ***When Eve mentioned DNA, he used a syringe from the bar to draw blood and gave it to Eve. ***He said that he spent most nights at the club and used Allesseria as his alibi for the previous night. **Once outside, they separated, with Peabody and McNab heading to the lab with the blood sample, while Eve decided to work from home. She looked Vadim up to find a lengthy criminal record. Allesseria, on the other hand, came up clean. **Eve and Roarke agreed that Vadim had an evil air about him; Roarke called him soulless. Back at the mansion, they have sex. *Chapter 6 **Over dinner, Eve backtracked through Vadim’s criminal record, speaking to cops all over America and Europe. Roarke’s unregistered look at his financials yielded the information that, despite the losses his club was making, the balance in Vadim’s bank account was steadily growing. **Eve told Roarke that Vadim reminded her of her father; that when he looked at her, she thought he could see the defenseless child she had been. Roarke suggested she speak to Mira about her feeling, but she declined, and they go back to work. **At Bloodbath, Allesseria finished her shift and left the club. Once she was on street level, she dug out her ‘link from her bag to contact Eve’s office, reached voicemail instead. As she started to leave a message, someone swooped out of the darkness, lifted her off the ground and dragged into a nearby dark corner, where he killed her. Day 3 (April 20, 2060) *Chapter 6 (continued) **Eve checked her voicemail for a report from the lab. Instead, she found Allesseria’s interrupted message and watched a hand grab her neck, before the ‘link shattered to the ground and broke the connection. **Eve contacted Dispatch with Allesseria’s address as Roarke drove them there. When the apartment was reported empty, Eve ordered a search in a five-block radius. *Chapter 7 **In Allesseria’s neighborhood, Eve zeroed in on an abandoned building as the possible scene of crime. They kicked the door in to find her splayed on the floor, her blood in a pool from the puncture wounds in her throat. **Eve examined the scene and determined that Alleseria had been beaten and raped; then her body had been set up to make a cocky statement. Allesseria’s ex-husband, Rick Sabo, arrived and was questioned. **The lab contacted Eve to tell her that Vadim’s blood did not match the DNA found on Tiara. Fuming, Eve instructed Roarke to work with Feeney on cleaning up the video from Allesseria’s message to see if they could get a glimpse of the killer. She told Peabody to make sure that Morris personally collected the DNA from this corpse and sent it to the lab. **Eve and Peabody considered, and immediately dismissed, the possibility that Vadim had had Alleseria killed by somebody else. They went to the lab, where Eve asked Dickie Berenski to try to match the blood they got from Vadim with a deceased donor. While they waited, Eve tagged Feeney and filled him in. Dickie found a match in the system – Gregor Pensky, a Bulgarian, who had been dead a year. **Eve and Peabody discussed that Vadim might have other victims too. Eve recalled Mira’s initial profile that Vadim was suffering from a mental illness but said that she thought that it was more likely that he was running a con based on vampire lore. **Back in her bullpen, Eve found that Baxter had hung clumps of garlic from the door as a joke. She commandeered his computer and confirmed that Pensky, too, had been found with puncture wounds on his neck. **She contacted Morris who confirmed that Allesseria had been exsanguinated too, and that the same drug cocktail that had been found in Tiara had been transferred into her body via the neck wounds. The DNA retrieved from the body had been sent to the lab for comparison. **Eve decided to go back to Bloodbath to re-interview Vadim and, this time, she took Baxter and Trueheart with her. *Chapter 8 **Vadim refused to provide Eve with another DNA sample and stated that he was unable to tolerate sunlight due to religious reasons, and wouldn’t accompany Eve to Cop Central. He had a legal document protecting him. ***His sexual partner for the night, Kendra Lake, provided him with an alibi for the time when Allesseria had been killed. Trueheart recognized the look in her eyes and told Eve that she was definitely drugged to the eyeballs. **Eve told Baxter and Trueheart to go to EDD and look for a connection between Vadim and Pensky. Peabody was told to track down Tiara’s missing jewelry in case the killer had tried to sell it. **Eve tried to convince APA Cher Reo to get a warrant that would allow her to drag Vadim into Interview despite the legal order protecting his religious rights. Reo said that the warrant would never be granted because the evidence wasn’t enough. She promised to do some research and offered to get Eve a warrant to search Bloodbath for Illegals. *Chapter 9 **Eve tracked down Roarke and Feeney in EDD and learned that they didn’t have any information from the video that would hold up in court. Eve decided to use the video to scare Vadim into thinking that they had solid proof against him. **Roarke didn’t like Eve’s plan to go into Bloodbath without backup, but she managed to convince him that any other approach would send Vadim into hiding. They discussed how like Eve’s father Vadim was, how they both liked causing pain, and Eve said that she had to stop him before he hurt somebody else. To her amusement, Roarke gave Eve a cross to keep her safe. **Eve filled her team in on the plan. She wanted to get as many civilians out of the club as possible without alerting Vadim. The aim was to get him, but only after Eve had collected enough evidence from him and given the signal. **Baxter gave her a wooden stake to use as protection against the vampire, and laughed as he termed her “Eve Dallas, Vampire Slayer.” *Chapter 10 **Eve beat up the bouncers at Bloodbath and strode in straight toward Vadim. When she said she wanted to talk to him in private, he took her to his office. Eve accepted that she had no warrant for his arrest, but she knew that he was responsible for the two murders. She told him that felt different around him and had to know what he did. She got him to switch off the screens on which he surveyed the club from his office. **Recognizing the signal, Feeney sent all the backup teams, including Roarke, into the club. **Eve continued to let Vadim think she was interested in his lifestyle until he accepted that death excited him. She then told him that she had a voiceprint match from Allesseria’s ‘link message. **The club was chaotic after the police had stormed in, and announced a raid. As the others dealt with the furious, intoxicated clientele, Roarke fought to make his way to Eve in the private office. **Eve continued to taunt Vadim, telling him that they had linked him to Pensky and they would get a warrant to search his office and home for the rest of Tiara’s blood. He leaped at her and kept coming even as Eve fired her stunner at him. They fought, until Eve was on the floor hurt. Vadim promised to turn her into a vampire like him, sure that he would succeed with her because, unlike Tiara, she was strong enough. **Feeney and Roarke bypassed the office locks. They broke the door down to find Eve nearly unhurt, while Vadim lay on the floor, the wooden stake in his stomach. **Roarke carried Eve out of the club, while Feeney and Peabody took over the responsibility of getting Vadim checked by the MTs and transporting him to Cop Central. **Sitting outside the club, Eve took the blocker Roarke gave her. She told him that while Vadim was on some Zeus cocktail, he had believed, as Mira had suspected, that he really was a vampire. She thanked him for the cross because it had bought her time in the fight. They discussed the different faces of evil, how Vadim was crazy but her father had been simply evil. **Eve pulled out her communicator to get an update from Peabody. She promised to wrap up the case and head home with Roarke by sunrise. Memorable Quotes Character List List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book *Eve Dallas *Roarke List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book *David Baxter *Ryan Feeney *Mavis Freestone *Nadine Furst *Ian McNab *Charlotte Mira *Delia Peabody *Lawrence Summerset *Troy Trueheart *Jack Whitney List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book *Dickie Berenski *Crack *Galahad *Morris *Cher Reo List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book *Allesseria Carter *Estella Cruz *Martine Cruz *Georgio Francine *Iris Francine *Kendra Lake *Rick Sabo *Dorian Vadim *Daffodil Wheats List of Peripheral Characters Appearing in this Book *Roman Gramaldi *Tiara Kent *Caramel Lipton *Mariella *Gregor Pensky *Mr. Tripps Trivia Other Covers Other Releases Footnotes Eternity in Death Category:The Novels